Preface The genesis of this book over the last decade is twofold. In part, it
grew out of the great interest in my 1990 book The Politics of Rich and Poor,
but other roots lay in my increasing turn to history, not least economic history,
during the 1990s. It is hard to imagine how the excesses bred by that decade
– the technology mania and bubble, the money culture, belief that economic cycles
were over, policies of market extremism, corruption and a politics ruled by
campaign contributions – could have developed so destructively if so much knowledge
of the past had not slipped away in stock market and “new era” triumphalism.

As previous periods of excess crested or crashed, books emerged to flesh
out the historical context of wealth and its wayward pursuit. Gustavus Myers
published The History of the Great American Fortunes in 1909 just as the Gilded
Age was ending under the whip of Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement.
Matthew Josephson published The Robber Barons in 1934 just when mid-depression
Americans were blaming another generation of commercial and financial leaders
for the speculative bubble and crash in 1929. This book was begun in 1999
for much the same purpose: to inform public understanding and reform aspirations
with a sweep of history – wealth, democracy and

Air marshal program in disarray, insiders say Dozens of top agents have quit
the service. By Blake Morrison, USA TODAY

For years, the government touted federal air marshals as the best of the
best -- an ''elite corps'' of undercover officers trained to stop hijackings
on commercial flights.

But today, after rushing to hire thousands of new marshals, the program is
so beset with problems that sources say at least 80 marshals have quit, and
other marshals say they are considering a class-action lawsuit over working
conditions that they fear put travelers at risk.

ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP: SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION? by
bob feldman The mass-circulation weekly TEMPO accused Ford of having once played,
at the urging of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, a covert role in Indonesian
political affairs by consciously supporting the work of individuals who were
deemed to be sympathetic to the anti-communist aims of American foreign policy.
— Chronicle of Philanthropy, 12/13/01

The Ford Foundation's history of collaboration and interlock with the CIA
in pursuit of U.S. world hegemony is now a well-documented fact...The Ford
Foundation has in some ways refined their style of collaboration with Washington's
attempt to produce world cultural domination, but retained the substance of
that policy...The ties between the top officials of the Ford Foundation and
the U.S. government are explicit and continuing.—James Petras in "The Ford
Foundation and the CIA: A documented case of philanthropic collaboration with
the Secret Police" on 12/15/2001

A Newsnight investigation raised the possibility that there was a secret
CIA project to investigate methods of sending anthrax through the mail which
went madly out of control.

The shocking assertion is that a key member of the covert operation may have
removed, refined and eventually posted weapons-grade anthrax which killed
five people.

In the wake of Sept 11th, the anthrax attacks caused panic throughout the
States and around the world. But has the FBI found the whole case too hot
to handle? Our science editor Susan Watts reported from Washington.

A "key member of covert operations" - yet covert operations itself can
never be suspected.

March 2, 2003 For decades, in cities from coast
to coast, FBI agents recruited killers and crime bosses as informants and then
looked the other way as they continued to commit violent crimes. When the practice
first came to light in Boston — unleashing a continuing investigation that already
has sent one agent to prison for obs truction of justice — FBI officials in
Washington portrayed it as an aberration.
But interviews by the Associated Press with nine former
FBI agents — men with a combined 190 years of experience in more than 25 bureau
offices from Texas to Chicago and from Los Angeles to Washington — indicate
the practice was widespread during their years of service between the late 1950s
and the 1990s.

Corruption Deters Foreign Investment "... a worsening in a host government's
corruption level from that of Singapore to that of Mexico is equivalent to about
a 21 percentage point increase in the marginal tax rate for foreign investors."

From the booming "tigers" of East Asia to the rapidly liberalizing markets
of Latin America, corruption has become a significant drag on attracting much-needed
foreign direct investment (FDI), in some instances acting with the prohibitive
power of a 20 percent tax hike, according to an NBER study by Shang-Jin Wei.
In How Taxing is Corruption on International Investors (NBER Working Paper
No.6030), he analyzes bilateral investment flowing from 14 source countries,
including the seven largest investors in the world, to 45 host countries.
He finds corruption to be on a par with high taxation in terms of its negative
effect on investment.

October 24, 2001 Narco News 2001 Narco-Dollars for Beginners "How the Money
Works" in the Illicit Drug Trade Part I in a Series By Catherine Austin Fitts
Special to the Narco News Bulletin Narco News Publisher's Note: Catherine Austin
Fitts is a former managing director and member of the board of directors of
Dillon Read & Co, Inc, a former Assistant Secretary of Housing-Federal Housing
Commissioner in the first Bush Administration, and the former President of The
Hamilton Securities Group, Inc. She is the President of Solari, Inc, an investment
advisory firm. Solari provides risk management services to investors through
Sanders Research Associates in London.

The TI Corruption Perceptions Index 2002 ranks 102 countries, the highest
number ever. Seven out of ten countries ranked score less than 5 out of a
clean score of 10

Berlin, 28 August 2002 Download MS Word versionDownload pdf version Please
scroll down or click on the following sections: "Political elites and their
cronies continue to take kickbacks at every opportunity. Hand in glove with
corrupt business people, they are trapping whole nations in poverty and hampering
sustainable development. Corruption is perceived to be dangerously high in
poor parts of the world, but also in many countries whose firms invest in
developing nations," said Peter Eigen, Chairman of Transparency International,
speaking today on the launch of the Corruption Perceptions Index 2002 (CPI).

HALL OF SHAME Keeping track of the journalists and academics who promote
their careers by denying climate change.

One would think that no one could continue to seriously deny our addiction
to fossil fuels is damaging the world's climate systems. Who could be arrogant
enough to ignore the consensus of 2,000 climate scientists and all the world's
scientific institutions; blind enough to miss the melting permafrost, the
shrinking glaciers, the regular freak weather?

Yet, as always, there is a small group of people happy to distort the truth
to promote themselves and build their careers. Some are directly funded by
the fossil fuel industries. Some are self promoting egotists seeking attention.
Some just want to be controversial and fill a newspaper column.

DISPATCH #2 FROM VENEZUELA: Since Chávez is No Liberal, Why Do His Detractors
Try To Paint Him Pink? Once upon a time, the U.S. relied on Venezuela to undermine
Arab interests in OPEC. Venezuela effectively broke the Arab embargo in the
early 1970's by kicking its own production into overdrive to make up for the
shortfall. Chávez changed all that. His foreign policy seems tailor-made
to irritate a corporate-cozy oilman such as Bush.

by Brad Carlton July 10, CARACAS— One day and counting to the second attempt
in three months to overthrow the government. The eleventh seems to be an especially
popular date for coups in the Americas. Salvador Allende of Chile was overthrown
in a U.S.-backed coup d'état on September 11, 1973. Most recent was
the coup here in Caracas last April 11 that unseated the most galvanizing
public figure in the Western Hemisphere, President Hugo Chávez, before
the replacement government's repressive and anti-democratic policies brought
him back to power in two days, an unprecedented development. Nothing if not
determined, the frustrated anti-Chavez forces will organize another massive
march to the president’s headquarters, Palacio Miraflores, to d

The following is reprinted with permission of the author and mirrored from its
source at: http://www.rebelion.org/petras/english/ford010102.htm

The Ford Foundation and the CIA: A documented case of philanthropic collaboration
with the Secret Police by James Petras 15 December 2001 Rebelión

The CIA uses philanthropic foundations as the most effective conduit to channel
large sums of money to Agency projects without alerting the recipients to
their source. From the early 1950s to the present the CIA's intrusion into
the foundation field was and is huge. A U.S. Congressional investigation in
1976 revealed that nearly 50% of the 700 grants in the field of international
activities by the principal foundations were funded by the CIA (Who
Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, Frances Stonor
Saunders, Granta Books, 1999, pp. 134-135). The CIA considers foundations
such as Ford "The best and most plausible kind of funding cover" (Ibid,
p. 135). The collaboration of respectable and prestigious foundations, according
to one former CIA operative, allowed the Agency to fund "a seemingly limitless
range of covert action programs affecting youth groups, labor unions, universities,
publishing houses and other private institutions" (p. 135). The latter included
"human rights" groups beginning in the 1950s to the present. One of the most
important "private foundations" collaborating with the CIA over a significant
span of time in major projects in the cultural Cold War is the Ford Foundation.

INTRODUCTION RE: "The Last Circle" The following condensed version of The Last
Circle was provided in October 1996 to a secret Investigative Committee comprised
of Congress people, lawyers and former POW's at their request. I originally
contacted Congresswoman Maxine Waters in Washington D.C. and offered information
relative to CIA drug trafficking, but was told the information was too complex
and would I mind putting the information into a newspaper story, get it published
and send it to her office?

I agreed and contacted a local newspaper reporter who, after reading portions
of the material, decided it needed to be reviewed by individuals who had special
knowledge of CIA drug trafficking, arms shipments, and biological warfare
weapons.

After a brief meeting with these individuals, former Special Forces soldiers
from the Vietnam era, they asked for copies of the manuscript, guaranteed
an immediate congressional inquiry, and advised me NOT to place the information
on the Internet as they feared the information could be, in their words, "taken
as just another anti-government conspiracy."

The Man Who Paid the Price for Sizing Up Enron By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. Isaac
Menashe/ZUMA Press Representative Henry A. Waxman has accused PaineWebber of
breaching its fiduciary duties. In DepthUnderstanding EnronWhat happened to
the company, and what are the implications? A guide Andersen Chief Quits in
Effort to Rescue Firm (March 27, 2002) Waste Management Executives Are Named
in S.E.C. Accusation